In the World of the High Tech Redneck, the Graybeard is the old guy who earned his gray by making all the mistakes, and tries to keep the young 'uns from repeating them. Silicon Graybeard is my term for an old hardware engineer; a circuit designer. The focus of this blog is on doing things, from radio to home machine shops and making all kinds of things, along with comments from a retired radio engineer running from tech or science news to economics; from firearms to the world at large.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

You Are Being Probed

Former blogger GardenSerf, who used to have a blog of the same name, spoke once about being a child in small town America somewhere that was chosen as a test market for the McDonald's McRib sandwich. He used the term "McRib test" to describe how large groups of people may be tested without the testing group actually committing to anything. If too few people buy the McRib, maybe they never market the thing nationally, or they change a recipe and try again. Similarly, in DC, they call it "floating a trial balloon"; a leak from an "unnamed source" so those in power can see the response of other lawmakers, the chattering pundits and the general public.

I'm convinced that at least some of the things we're hearing about proposed gun control laws are McRib tests. I'm not sure whom they're watching or whom they're testing, but I think we are being probed. Look at just this collection pulled from Drudge:

If the goal of these "lawmakers" is to plunge the US into bloody civil war, that ought to work. As I've said before, I'm not sure Obama is trying to destroy the US, I just don't see what he'd be doing differently if he was. Others can give more details on what's likely to happen and how it might go down, but as someone I ran across put it: the last one took 620,000 Americans; I wonder how many this one will take? Every report we can come across, anecdotal or sourced, says that since the Sandy Hook massacre, gun sales are at all time record levels. As commenter perlhaqr said in response to my piece two Sundays ago, "Has it Started?"

"I don't think all those people are buying all that stuff just to have one to turn in, pal."

I think there's a feeling in the air that everyone is sharing. A feeling that something bad is coming. Maybe they're buying one in hopes of being grandfathered and maybe they're expecting trouble.

I've seen numbers that say there are about 800,000 police/LEOs in this country, and call it 2,000,000 with all the military and others are added in. You can figure that some percentage of them would refuse, even to the point of fighting the chain of command. That leaves a tiny fraction of the number of gun owners. Confiscation raids would be an ugly, bloody mess for everyone involved.

I have lived my entire life on borrowed time and now in the twilight of
my years, I have but one thing to say to those determined to take away
or limit my right to own a firearm and to transform and destroy the
greatest nation in the history of mankind. I, and many like me, will
not be intimidated and you will only accomplish your ultimate ends over
our dead bodies.

34 comments:

As a lifelong history buff, history says this will not end well. We the People do have the numbers but the end result is the main concern.

The transition when it ends. Will we be able to make that transition back to the Constitutional Republic that all we Patriots believe in and want?

My belief is that the libs in charge believe this is their time, their shot, and their aim IS to push us over the edge and then hope to step in and be our saviors to make that transition fall their way.

This is all the result of the NWO types infiltrating our high officesof government, and Marxists teaching our children their goosestepping mantras for many years. These enabled the enemiesof this country to get to where they are. What with our leaders andthose from foreign countries in on the scam, we have been fooledand basically surrounded and infiltrated by these, " Fabyan "socialists. Look at the pagan worshipping going on at those meetings at the Bohemian Grove. And all of our POTUS's have joined in since it's inception. And the NWO is being bankrolled bybig money from Europe and here also. The Federal Reserve hasbeen instituted by these types and for the purpose of destroying this country through destroying it's monetary base.

Obama WANTS a civil war, If they pass this law ,and only 1% of gun owners resist thats 3 million men under arms. Those 3 million WILL NOT be waiting in there homes for the Police. They will be lined up allong the roads killing anything in a goverment uniform. This is what Obama WANTS. It allows him to; declare martial law, suspend elections, invoke the patriot act, use the military to suppress "revolution" , bring in the UN and make himself "president for life". Grey ,what we are watching is the opening gambit of a marxist coup, One supported by the majority of the people at the top. If the people fight he gets what he wants. If they don't fight, He takes the wepons and still wins. This ends badly any way it falls.

Yes, either way it sucks. Since that is the case, it behooves us to do our best to make sure it sucks for _them_ as well. Targeting the elite, rather than just those that the elite send to do their bidding. Targeting those who have enabled the elite, by pushing the socialist/Marxist agenda (I wouldn't want to be driving a Volvo or Prius when this goes down ;-)

If we don't make at least _some_ of the elite, some of the politicians and bureaucrats pay the price, we will indeed have played right into their hands, and accomplished their goal for them. As Stephen Coonts wrote in one of his novels, the time will have come to decorate the lampposts in DC and elsewhere.

How many Jews', Gypsies', homosexuals', etc. thought as they tried to claw their way to the top of the developing pile of dead while the Zyklon B fumes spread up from the floor that it would have been preferable to die with a hot barrel and an empty magazine?_revjen45

A while back, years prior to our current troubles, I had a discussion on this topic with someone in law enforcement: "880K in LE, 80 to 90 million gun owners. Do the math. Do you think all of those 80 million plus will sit meekly at home waiting for you to knock on their doors? Every one of your neighbors know in which house a government agent lives; John and Mary from across the street won't burn your house down at 3AM with you and your family in it, but I guarantee a number of their co-workers and friends know they live across the street from you. Today you're a cop they call on for help; tomorrow you'll be a government agent that has to be eliminated to protect themselves."

If something like this ever starts there's no reason for it to end before it's completely over; cops, government bureaucrats, TSA agents, all will be on the list. You know that sweet little old lady who works part-time 3 days a week in the county tax office? Somewhere, there's an angry taxpayer who had to pay $150 more in taxes that he didn't think he owed, and that $150 was the difference between new clothes for the kids and eating spaghetti for a month.

It won't be the U.S. Army against the Germans in WWII - one side won't have Sgts, Lts, and Captains who can give orders to troops and expect them to be obeyed. It'll be Ralph and maybe his cousin Chuck, or Harry across town, operating completely independently, each with a network of wives, girlfriends, kids, neighbors, friends, providing intelligence about the enemy. Guns? Sure, some. Gasoline, too. Hacksaws and chains as well - cut water lines and rip power meters off walls, pull transformers out of the ground, chop poles down. Government vehicles don't move well with all 4 tires slashed. New ones? Sorry, Fred's Tire and Auto is closed this month. Don't know where Fred is, haven't seen him, and he only takes cash anyway, no purchase orders. No quarter asked, or given.

If you think you know ugly, you haven't seen ugly yet. And I hope we never do. No sane person would ever consider doing something that could possibly lead to such events. What we're seeing now is a mixture of trial balloons to see what the response such statements produce, and preparing the battlespace for whatever action they think they can get away with.

I really, really, hope sanity surfaces and Some People begin to understand how reality works.

Very, very true. But that is when those same folks, in their Volvos and Priuses, the campus professors who have been filling the students heads full of Marxist bullsh*t, and the union leaders and shop stewards (remember, a lot of union members only belong because they were forced to join) need to experience a "correction" in their understanding of how seriously they have screwed up. They have chosen the wrong side in their decision to abandon the Constitution.

The anonymous gentleman above speaks to two key points which I would like to amplify:1. "If you think you know ugly, you haven't seen ugly yet. And I hope we never do. No sane person would ever consider doing something that could possibly lead to such events." - I agree, and there lies my concern - there are many 'true believers' in the lefty crowd who have no clue what *ugly* actually is. Many of these fools honestly believe that Aurora and Sandy Hook have been personal attacks upon them and their families. Really. For many, the outrage is 100% real, and nearly off the scale in their minds - they may be deluded to consider these events as personal attacks, but they do. So my concern is your "no sane person" clause, and how much sanity we should actually expect from them if this fire gets stoked much hotter in their minds? Now, if you were one of them, and really believed that it was "already a war, so we just have to win it" then you would also believe that "things couldn't get much worse than the war we're already in", right? <--- THIS RIGHT HERE is the sound of the warning siren in my mind - if they're cracked enough to really believe that it can't get much worse, then this is the very reason why they would push this to the absolute ugliest it can get. By the time they see that they were wrong about what ugly *really* looks like, there will be plenty of spilled blood and it will be too late for them to undo it.2. "If something like this ever starts there's no reason for it to end before it's completely over; cops, government bureaucrats, TSA agents, all will be on the list."- Again, I absolutely agree: the bureaucracy will get cleaned out; and a lot of other scurvy turds and pompous A-holes will get taken down, as well. Some cheer at that thought, but this is a two-edged sword. Killing starts out as a needful thing, but can easily become a habit, and that is dangerous. The first few kills are the most difficult, the most tenuous. Subsequent kills, you will focus upon confidence and follow through, and then upon technique and speed. By the time you've killed 25 or 30 men at close quarters, you have reduced the challenge to the purely mechanical aspects, and the work is no longer "gruesome", its "invigorating". When killing becomes easy, any vendetta rises to a Capital offense, unless the man-become-killing-machine has outstanding discipline; so it won't just be the TSA dick and the tax collector who get reduced when TSHTF, it may also end up being *that guy on Craig's list who sold them that piece of crap 6 months ago*. Seriously; just look at the facts. Men habituated to violence tend to seek and maintain a higher level of violence in their lives even when it's not necessary for survival. Examples? When the skinnies in Mogadishu weren't fighting us, they would seek out and fight each other, as feuding clans did in the Scottish highlands in centuries past. Gangs in the US frequently skirmish for no better reason that to maintain their edge and initiate their new members. As with all 'clan' warfare, it is part vendetta, part sport; part survival and part bragging rights.

Once this 'clan violence' mentality has momentum, it is very difficult to bring to a halt, and this is part of the danger for us. Men who do not have the discipline of soldiers will become confident in killing, and this is a dangerous pivot point for the future of Liberty, because decades or centuries of clan/regional vendetta warfare doesn't provide any more freedom than it does stability. God save us from what we may have to do amongst our own to bring the violence to a halt when the *Legitimate Conflict* is over, lest it devolve into such habituated violence and become a generational curse upon our nation.LT~Those who abuse Liberty, sentence themselves to Death!

This is indeed something to be concerned with. As much as I know Hollywood is not the real world, in Savior - a movie about a soldier who saw the atrocities that took place in Bosnia - we can catch a glimpse of what happens when a country finds itself in the kind of civil war you write about above.

There will be many who lose sight of what is moral and acceptable when the bounds of normal civilized behavior are slipped. When killing becomes acceptable for good reason, it will become acceptable to many for the wrong reasons. That is a fact which cannot be disputed.

Hopefully & I mean it, when all the real hard targets are eliminated I'm sure there will be some excess, but these are not professional warriors & will want to go home to the farm or anywhere that is home & peacefull.

"God save us from what we may have to do amongst our own to bring the violence to a halt when the *Legitimate Conflict* is over, lest it devolve into such habituated violence and become a generational curse upon our nation."

Just as long as it doesn't involve 'disarmament', i think we'll do fine.

I've seen this fight coming for quite some time and the fact that we stand at the precipise chills me to the bone. What chills me more is the choice, or lack of choice, I have and on what side of history I must stand as this progresses. With regards to the 2nd Amendment, there is and must be no quarter.

I can't even get it though my own families head that this isn't about hunting - it is about being able to defend oneself and country from a tyranical, out-of-control government. Running a defecit it clearly has no intention of ever repaying fits the definition quite aptly as far as I am concnerned. But there is plenty more and too much to list if that isn't enough.

Continually, we are told to vote and let the 'legitimate' election process run it's course. What legitimate election process? With a higher than 90% re-election rate, what chance is there ever of a complete turnover in Congress? Senator and Congressman go onto serve lifetimes in what should have been one or two term positions. Complacency breeds familiarity.

I have seen and been involved in the election process enough to know it is a sham. The light bulb really went off with the TARP bailout, where the calls against it ran in the area of +90%, and still Congress approved it. We no longer control our own government; Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, BOA, Citibank, etc. all do. These are who Congress truly answers to.

What this fight also involves, it looks to me like, is the implementation of the UN Small Arms Ban Treaty. If I am not mistaken, this was finally signed shortly after the election. I believe the US was the last significant hold-out on this. The implementation of this would be one of the final pieces needed to finally enact global governance, which has been the globalists wet dream; one curreny, one government, one world...

Good luck to you all. I know that the next few months will bring tough choices; people will be walking away from careers, families and the comforts we have all enjoyed. I'm sure discussions with spouses are going on now on what one is going/willing to do. It won't be easy, but I think history, God willing, will recognize the sacrifices made by brave men not willing to back down. See you in the trenches..

" I'm not sure whom they're watching or whom they're testing, but I think we are being probed."

Could it be a distraction? by now they have to realize that disarmament would be bloody and a PR nightmare even with a compliant press, maybe they're distracting us with this in order to pull some stunt somewhere else? Are we missing something?

"Confiscation raids would be an ugly, bloody mess for everyone involved. "

While I generally agree, they won't be a bloody mess if neighbors don't help neighbors. A SWAT team can take one or two homeowners with guns even if they lose a few. But if the couple next door and the couple across the street open fire on their exposed rear, they're screwed.

RU - I don't think it'll go like that. If they declare "by executive order" - semi-autos to be Title II firearms you'll need an approved Form 4 to own one. Instead of DUI Checkpoints there will be "Safety Checkpoints" where cars will be searched for contraband, and they'll be laid out inside a secure perimeter; every 5th vehicle, say, gets directed into a parking lot or space between buildings.

These "Safety Checkpoints" will draw fire, so they'll learn to set them up and take them down quickly. They'll also produce informants: "Mr. Jones, it seems you have illegal/unregistered/too much ammunition which is a felony. We'd like to help you, but you have to help us first."

Raids will be lightning affairs, done well after dark, with overwhelming manpower to establish a secure perimeter.

And that's how it will go: go after people one or two at a time. Instill maximum fear and foreboding.

Which will work for a little while. Then all Hell will break loose. It will be brutal, bloody and devastating no matter which side one is on. We have them outnumbered, and once the frustration and anger push our side over the edge into unrelenting action we'll win. Or, rather, the other side will be a much bigger loser than our side.

LT Prepper makes a salient point: it will be difficult to "turn some people off" after several months of horrendous battle, because there won't be much societal structure left to support "normal." After WWII, veterans returned to the US to a society very much the same as it was when they went off to battle, which made it easier to "go back to normal."

This time it won't be like that. We may have no choice, but if you're not praying for Divine Intervention to avoid it, now would be a good time to start.

Roger once the gun confication begins they will get a few lone wolfs in the beginning. After that people will band together and will be lying in wait for them in ambush position and no quarter will be given or go directly to their houses and execute them. How long before the regular police and swat teams realize it is a death sentence and say the government thugs are on their own. Not to mention some police, maybe more than i think, will outright quit or change sides and provide intel.

I'm a cop and I have found NOT ONE officer or deputy who states that he will go along with a confiscation or will register his own weapons. I'm prepared to walk away from my job NOW if ordered to do anything un-Constitutional. Please, don't randomly target peace officers. Most of them share your views and can be valuable assets in this fight. By the way, there is a difference in a cop who considers himself a peace officer versus one who considers himself law enforcement.

Amen. I know many peace officers, and a few "Law Enforcement"... the difference is quite distinct, not in the job description, but in the attitude. The LE guys, whom I served with way back when, and am not very close with these days, I have been simply going dark on. This is sad, because we went through a few scuffs together in our day, but they have let it go to their heads. Thank God it never got to mine, and I was graced with eyes to see and ears to hear what is coming our way.We Have been Warned...and at least some of us are honoring our duty as watchmen.May our republic again enjoy the providence she knew in her youth,LT

I agree that most local peace officers will make the right choice when the time comes, especially in rural and small to medium towns.Big city cops, Feds, and the various alphabet agencies will probably need to be "persuaded."

Anon, 8;29 PM: "I'm a cop and I have found NOT ONE officer or deputy...."

Well, maybe.

Sure, you're one of the Good Guys, Salt of the Earth, terrific Protector of Rights, etc. Problem is, your daily wardrobe looks exactly like the ones worn by the not-so-pleasant-folks who kick in doors at the wrong address, shoot dogs and handcuff kids, and the vehicle you drive looks exactly like theirs. So, how do we tell you guys apart at 400 meters?

Problem, meet Solution...

A lot will depend on what activities are engaged in. The poor schmuck who sits underneath the light bar all day is probably an American who understands what all this is about and worries about it a lot. The fellatio experts upstairs with lots of gold on their collars, not so much.

So, when the top floors pancake down to ground level, not only does all that gold get buried, it's on top of your desk.

You're taking the same attitude towards cops that the gun-grabbers are taking toward guns: they're all evil. Don't tell me "Well, maybe." when you haven't spoken with scores of other cops in multiple agencies as have I. I have word coming back that even ATFE wants no part of this. Maybe you, sir, are one of these rogues who can't turn off the trigger squeeze. Oh, but that would be stereotyping. Right? Finally, my military and peace officer training have instilled that I know what and WHO my target is, even at "400 meters."

@Anon 0930 - Trust me, I do know what and who my target is at 400 meters (and beyond, for that matter). As for your bona fides, you might be surprised at what I did for 16 years, for whom I did it, and with whom I worked while doing it. All of which is irrelevant to this discussion. We're discussing future, not past.

It doesn't surprise me that BATFE "wants no part of this." I'm sure FBI, DEA, and the other alphabet soup agencies want no part of it either, mostly because the troops in those agencies understand what it means when you're outnumbered 100-to-1, all 100 consider you the enemy, fifty of them know where you live and 20 of those know what car you drive.

But, dealing with your reference to my 400 meter statement: given the choice between dealing with ten government agents at 1 meter and two at 400, I'll take the 400 deal. Do enough of those 400 meter transactions and it solves the 1 meter problem.

Like I said: Problem, meet Solution.

Does that mean some Smiling Good Guys suffer the same fate as Scowling Bad Guys? Sure does.

Like I said: Sorry about that.

One solution would be to stop hanging around with Scowling Bad Guys who dress just like you. If those people happen to be co-workers, well, maybe they shouldn't be. At the very least maybe you shouldn't stand right next to them at the donut shop.

Sir, I do not wish to engage in an internet battle with you. Let it be enough that we are both moving toward the same end for our Republic. Hopefully, I will not encounter you from the muzzle end of your equipment, but I suspect by that point I will have surrendered my shield and will have found new employment rescuing our nation from certain usurpers. I pray God's blessings upon you and yours.

I have hosted a lot of deputies. 98% of the leo's I have hosted are pro-gun for citizens.

The NSA (national Sheriffs Assoc) has no repore with the rank and file.

It is as simple as knocking on the n.hood deputy/feds door.state your case. In fl they drive the car home, everybody knows who is who...

You can always kill his dog, kid, wife later. (ie waco)

I don't want this to turn into a shooting thing.'been there done that' 'got the tshirt''a hat''a couple of arcoms''and an honorable discharge' and I will likely go to hell for my actions. I am a catholic, but I don't believe we get a pass by saying 'sorry'

Lots of good thinking going on here, but may I ask if everyone is keeping it in the larger context? Remember, as much as they want to take 2A away, this is only part of what they want to inflict upon us. It's not coincidnce that the financial, social, and government issues are all coming at once, it is an essential part of their plan. Question is, are you prepared to survive the flipping of the financial iceberg, and the massive social tsunami which will follow?http://ncrenegade.com/uncategorized/what-is-coming-and-what-we-must-do/http://ncrenegade.com/editorial/the-federeal-government-is-getting-prepared-shouldnt-you/Want to know how big the monster is, and how far back it goes? Take a read here http://ncrenegade.com/uncategorized/money-and-manipulation-what-was-the-real-goal/

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Retired radio engineer, follower of Christ, RF designer, mentor. Radio ham, home shop machinist, lapidary, silversmith, roadie cyclist, learning to be a rifleman, and home defender, - a guy with too many interests to keep track of.

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